Through a Glass, Darkly (Assassins of Youth MC #1) (5 page)

“Go on.” I continued walking, as though I could care less, but my heart had seized up. Mahalia had followed me back downstairs after my meeting the day before. Why?

“Well, you were on the phone, probably talking to Chelsea, am I right?”

I neither confirmed nor denied. “What did the lady do?”

“She came out of the main double doors and seemed sort of frantic, like she was looking for someone. She saw you and went over, but I guess you didn’t see her.”

“And?” I knew what “and.” And she turned around and left. Because I never saw her. She never talked to me. Although she could have.

“She turned around and went back inside.”

Fuck!
I nearly punched Breakiron for being the bearer of such bad news. She saw me, but made no effort to talk to me? That must’ve been because she’d overheard me declaring my undying love to poor Chelsea! Why this struck such a lance of despair through my chest, I had no idea. Maybe because I’d been busted being a fucking sap, leaving a lovelorn message for a girl I could never have. A girl, as far as I knew, who didn’t even want
me.
“How far away was she? How far was she standing?”

Breakiron shrugged his stupid shoulders. “I dunno. About here to that front door.”

We went in the front door, my mood soured with Breakiron’s stupid news. The place was dark, the decades’ worth of sandstone dust on the front windows not helping any. Stale smoke clung to the walls and three guys were playing pool at the only table in the back, eerily lit like a spaceship landing by an overhead Harley Davidson sign.

I could tell Breakiron was thinking the same thing I was—and believe you me, the idea we were thinking the same thing was depressing. But those three guys wearing leather vests were just riding club members, not one percenters like we were. One guy had a patch on his back that said “Motor Psycho.” Another patch on another guy said, “Take It Out and Play with It” over a picture of a bike. As outlaws, Breakiron and I knew we wouldn’t be caught dead with patches like that. I was glad I’d worn my cut today. I hadn’t worn it inside the gates of Cornucopia, for obvious reasons. No point in advertising the transaction.

We sat our asses down on barstools as if we owned the place. The bartender looked like the epitome of an old miner, with a long gray beard. He even wore suspenders. We ordered Buds, because that was the only thing on tap, although it tasted like the piss of a scared rabbit.

Breakiron wandered off to the jukebox and I had no choice but to catch the eye of the only other guy sitting at the bar.
Shit
. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts, not catch the eye of some slick coozemonkey. As if I was trolling for some guy who looked like a newscaster with a bad comb over.

But shit, I’d caught his stupid eye, and he brought his stupid drink over. He’d been smart enough to order hard liquor, and I could smell the brown liquid as he bashed it onto the bar.

“Afternoon!” he said brightly. He even had the voice of an announcer, slick and gravelly at the same time, like sandpaper on olive oil. He chuckled as he sat. “You on that Toys for Tots run, same as them?”

I looked over at the riding club guys. Our club did charity runs once in a while, but not many companies wanted us supporting them. So we wound up donating anonymously to things like breast cancer, child abuse, Puppies Behind Bars, issues that directly affected our club. I had to chuckle that this yahoo didn’t notice the rockers on my cut. “No. Not even remotely the same. You live here?” I did want to know more about Avalanche if I was going to be stuck here.

He laughed. “Not even remotely. I’m from Salt Lake. Trying to sell my line of appliances to these Cornucopia gents, but they just don’t seem interested.”

“I told you,” blared the bartender, louder than was necessary, since Breakiron hadn’t selected a song yet, “they’ve already got all their ducks in a row. They don’t need no more damned refrigerators.”

My new friend chuckled hollowly. “Come on! Who doesn’t need a new state of the art line of microwaves and dishwashers?”

“They don’t,” hollered the old miner. “I told you. They’ve got every supplier and vendor they need. How do you think they run everything so tiptop and shipshape? They don’t need no outsiders selling them junk.”

“And
I
told
you
, my fridges are
not
junk. They’re top of the line, high-tech A1 grade appliances.” The salesman was irritated with the bartender. I could tell they’d gone a few rounds together already. He turned to me, literally giving the barkeep the cold shoulder. “Nice to meet someone new. Bronson Carradine, at your service.” He held out his hand, and I had no choice but to shake it.

The bartender mumbled, “A made-up name if I ever heard one…” before moving down the bar to another pointless task.

The name
did
sound made-up, but I didn’t want to agree with the old miner. I’d drunk too much already to give much of a shit. I gave my real name. “So you’re gonna keep going into the compound? Those guys are a hard sell. I had to go in there yesterday.”

“Oh yeah? Selling something?”

“Exactly. Man, they do not mess around. They are serious as taxes.”

“Really. You’re not kidding. What’s it like in there?”

So I told him a bit. I mean, it wasn’t top secret or anything. Obviously delivery people had to go inside the compound, people like meter readers, repairmen, people meeting with Allred. So I told the guy. He seemed harmless enough. Aside from the usual interest in plural wives, he seemed really interested in the bookmaking operation.

“Is it a big building? Does it have any windows? Reason I ask is, sometimes sun can degrade paper.”

It was an odd question, but I saw no harm in answering it. “Now that you bring it up, it didn’t have any windows. My associate here would know.”

Breakiron had finally settled on punching the Allman Brothers, “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” It’s a great old biker instrumental, and of course he was leaning back playing air guitar in the vicinity of his penis. His eyes were closed in orgasmic happiness as he played, and he leaped to attention when I yelled,

“Breakiron!”

He weaved his way over, although he was only on his second Bud. He’d probably been self-lubricating since earlier, although hell, so had I. “Elizabeth Reed!” he bellowed, fist in the air. “Reed Smoot!”

Bronson laughed. “Who the hell is Reed Smoot? Sounds like one of those polygs inside the gate.”

“You hit the nail on the head,” I said. “Although I’ve yet to figure out exactly who he is.”

While Breakiron was confirming that the book bindery indeed had no windows, the dusty kid from the street wandered in. He sort of hugged the wall with his back like an old west outlaw expecting to get shot. It sounds corny to say, but he was so dark the whites of his eyes shone like crescent moons. He inched over to a round table that belonged to the pool players. Quick as a dog can lick a dish, he’d snatched up a bottle of beer, chugged it, then swiped the plastic basket of nachos, cradling it to his chest like a baby. He made for the exit, but the old miner was apparently quicker.

Pressing the barrel of a Winchester rifle to the dusty kid’s chest, I couldn’t hear what the miner growled, but I was on it.

The old man snarled, “I’ve seen you hanging around here the past week or so. I don’t give a good goddamn if you’re one of them lost boys from the compound. They kicked you out for a reason and you’re continuing your thieving ways here in my establishment and I won’t sit for it. I’m holding you here until the sheriff arrives.”

He was trying to dial his cell with one hand while keeping the kid at bay with the rifle, so I said, “Listen, let me help.”

Oddly, the bartender let me take the rifle. I just held it at my side, butt on the ground like that American Gothic guy and his pitchfork. I could actually
see
the kid trembling, the fabric of his Puma jacket shaking like a windsurfer’s sails. “What’s your name?” I said gently.

The kid muttered something I couldn’t hear over the twang of Duane and Dicky’s guitars, but suddenly Breakiron was on top of us.

He whipped the bartender’s phone from his hand. “You’re not calling no one on this kid! All he did was take some fucking nachos! In my book, that means he’s hungry. Have you ever been hungry?”

The bartender seemed to be leaking blood from his eyes, he was so irate. “I’m sick of these goddamned kids kicked out of the compound hanging around here. They’re like goddamned dingos lurking around back alleys waiting to swipe babies!”

And that was how Jonah Garff became known as Dingo.

“Look,” I said, “we’ll give you back your rifle and your phone if you just let this kid go. We’ll take care of him.”

“Yeah,” asserted Breakiron, his lower lip sticking out. I guess he had some good qualities, some of the time. “Here’s forty fucking bucks.” Handing the barkeep two bills, he strode behind the bar where the nachos had been congealing under warming lamps for god knows how long. He gathered as many checkered boxes of the vile things as he could and we all left the bar.

We went around the corner to the smoker’s bench and the kid munched away. He had orange blobs melting in the corners of his mouth, but at least he wasn’t hungry anymore.

“I know what it’s like to be hungry,” said Breakiron.

I said, “The bartender said there are a bunch of young men like this being kicked out of Cornucopia. Young men, not women.”

“Well, naturally,” said Breakiron, wise for once. “They want all the young women they can get. More boys are just more competition.”

“Dingo,” I said, because that name was easier to remember, “why are the young men being kicked out of the compound?”

Before Dingo could answer, that salesman Carradine was on us. Now
that
irritated me. We’d saved the kid from certain doom, not him. He’d just sat there, apparently freaked at the sight of a firearm. Now that the coast was clear, he wanted to be the lion of the day. The guy was starting to annoy me.

“What’s this? Yeah, kid, why are they kicking people out of Cornucopia?”

Dingo made one last, hearty, dry swallow, straining with the effort of the scratchy corn chips. He panted, “We are not wanted. They try to say we’ve stolen something or watched some bad movie, but the truth is, they just do not want us.” He spoke very formally, as though English wasn’t his second language. He, too, looked Navajo to me. Maybe he’d been adopted somehow into the compound.

“I’ve heard of this,” said Carradine. “They call them The Lost Boys. Poor damned kids. They take them outside of city limits and dump them on the side of the road. Did that happen to you, too?”

Dingo nodded enthusiastically. He had that wide-eyed fear that would melt the heart of a savage. “Yes, to me and many others. I was exiled for wearing a short-sleeved shirt. Another boy for playing a video game.”

Carradine fumed. “They’re excuses, just excuses! Made-up bullshit to strike the fear of God into the boys so they don’t complain about being tossed away for being surplus bodies!”

Carradine could be right. I did the math. “Why do you hang around, then?”

Dingo said, “Many of us go up north to Salt Lake, because around here all the officers of the law are in the pocket of Allred Chiles. But I have been too afraid to leave Cornucopia. They keep telling me I’ll fail out there. They kept telling me I’ll be ground up like a native dirt worshipper. I’ll be whipped like all maize munchers have been.”

I took the kid by the arm. “All right, this is fucking ridiculous. You’re coming with us. Catch you later, Carradine.”

“Please!” the salesman shouted, waving something. “Take my card! I’m staying in St. George at the Best Western. Let me know if you see any, ah, appliance openings inside Cornucopia.”

I took the stupid card, although I doubted that my gun—and now mining—business would involve many dishwashers. I started marching Dingo down the street. He sort of stumbled, like I was dragging him to the principal’s office. “Where have you been staying? Are there more of you in Avalanche?”

“I’ve been staying in the old schoolyard, in the principal’s office. That is, until they demo it. It’s scheduled for demolition next month. I’m the only one in town. I try to find boys who have been dumped off like me, and encourage them to go north to Salt Lake, to Bountiful. I’m a hypocrite, because I can’t get up the nerve to go myself.”

“How do you survive? Just by stealing?”

“Yes, because I need to hide whenever I see a Humvee or one of their pickup trucks. There are a few nice women who are allowed out who bring food to the school. But they could get in trouble if found out.”

I could relate. I’d been on the streets a few years before joining the Marines. I’d stooped to some pretty low-life behavior, some risky situations, because I’d felt I had no other option. The armed forces gave me the attitude, the encouragement that I was something better than a piece of shit. Although I’d seen lots of violence, to be sure, I’d walked away pumped up, with more ego than I’d ever had before. Before, I’d just been a hollow shell of a youth, like Dingo. I had no pride, no self-esteem. That had all been beaten out of me by my dad.

“Do you like motorcycles?” I asked him.

His eyes lit up. He was so unaware, so naive! It was almost refreshing to see, if I didn’t know
why
he was so innocent. He’d been thrown from one warped fantasy of reality—Cornucopia—into another without ever experiencing anything remotely like normalcy. “Motorcycles! Yes, there were a few on the compound, and I’ve seen a few here in town. They look dangerous!” We came within view of our motel parking lot, and he pointed. “Like those! Those are called ‘hogs,’ right?”

Breakiron said, “Only if you want to get rolled.”

The three of us grinned. I said, “I’ll let you ride one up later on.”

Breakiron said, “That means on his pussy pad.”

Dingo looked amazed. We stood by the scoots now, the youth admiring the not-so-shiny tailpipes, the chrome, the painting on the gas tank. He pointed to various parts of the bike, like a kid asking “what’s this?” and “what’s that?”

After about ten minutes of that, I brought Dingo into my room. Breakiron went back to his room to read more boob mags. Dingo was nearly bowled over at the sight of my laptop, open and turned on. I’d been googling shit about fundamentalists in an effort to understand how their minds worked. Apparently, Chiles was imposing tyrannical mind control over everyone, especially the women in close contact with him. There were a few magazine articles on him, but other than that, precious little had been allowed to be posted on the net.